Shoebox as incubator — and as coffin

Didi’s teacher assured us that silkworm moths couldn’t fly. But when we opened the shoebox to check on the first one that had emerged from the cocoon, it had gone missing.

We’d come straight from school to the party, and for safekeeping, we brought the cache of cocoons into our friend’s house. Had the moth flown the coop and was it now roaming around in there? How soon until it met an untimely end under someone’s foot?

Upon closer inspection, we realized that the shoebox had holes on the sides, and when we searched the car, we found the quivery creature, pale as the moon. We gently placed it back inside, and at home, my husband sealed the holes shut.

For weeks, Didi and Gege had been studying the silkworms, which grew and grew, munching voraciously and continuously on fresh mulberry leaves, before spinning the nubby cocoons around themselves. After three weeks of metamorphosis, the moths were about to mate and lay eggs — a stage of the life cycle that coincided with the end of school.

We volunteered to watch over a few as they made this transformation. They would live another week at most, and their eggs, after fertilization, would darken to gray. We could either let them hatch or refrigerate the eggs until spring, the teacher said, when we could bring them back to school to edify the secondgraders.

In elementary school, I remember raising a silkworm of my own, stroking its soft skin and admiring its tiny feet. I would marvel at the cocoon, where the silkworm — abracadabra, prestochangeo

— became a moth. How extraordinary! Watching the boys experience that same wonder made me feel it all over again.

According to Chinese legend, an empress discovered silk when a cocoon tumbled into her cup of tea. After unraveling it, she realized a fine cloth could be spun from its fibers.

To make silk thread, you boil the cocoons, killing the moths inside, a fact that haunted me ever since I learned about it decades ago.

The moths wandering about the shoebox seemed set free, able to carry out their life cycle.

Early the next morning, we discovered another moth in the process of boring its way out; I would later learn they emerge at dawn. I wondered how its body clock had known. As I started filming, at that very moment, it released a liquid beige blob. Astonishing. An egg? Waste that they couldn’t get rid of while in their cocoon?

“Look, look!” I called out to the boys, who came running and peered inside the shoebox.

“Can they fly?” Gege asked. “No,” I said. “Then why do they have wings?” he asked.

That stumped me. Domesticated silk moths have lost their ability to fly, it turns out.

Because we were scheduled to leave on vacation, we asked my brother to check on the moths every day, and if and when they all died, to put the shoebox in the refrigerator. A ridiculous sort of petsitting, but at least he didn’t have to worry about special kibble, picking up their poop or taking them on walks or to the vet.

He cheerfully sent us pictures, videos and updates every day. “Four more moths hatched today. It was a crazy morning!”

They twitched their wings, vibrating in place, starting to seek out a mate.

His text — “One of the moths escaped!” — accompanied a photo of a

moth clinging to the outside of the shoebox. Perhaps it was the same Houdini who’d made a break for it once before?

Toward the end of our trip, he sent us a photo of the hundreds of eggs attached to the walls of the shoebox, tiny white specks. “Are some clearly dead?” I texted him. “Not really. Most are still alive,” he replied.

I turned to my husband. “Do you think they know they’re going to die?”

“Do any of us?” he asked.

An existential question that I didn’t want to ponder deeply while lolling about in the sunshine, which called for carpe diem and another order of tacos. We returned home in time to witness the moths flap their wings for the last time. Now, the shoebox has become a combination coffin and incubator, stuffed into the back of the fridge. I’m still not sure how to dispose of their carcasses.

“Should we bury them?” I asked the boys. Maybe next to our deceased betta fish, under the redwood trees?

Gege had a more practical idea: “Compost them.”

I turned to my husband. “Do you think they know they’re going to die?” “Do any of us?” he asked.